Page 16 of The Dungeon Book

“And in the course of that quest, you ran afoul of that scoundrel Orphir?”

“He did this to me!”

“Ah,” I said, “I suspect he meant to kill you, not transform you.” Orphir was never good under pressure.

“I will find him,” rumbled the minotaur, “and end this curse.”

“Finding him may be difficult,” I counselled. “Ending the curse, though, borders on the impossible.”

“Magic did it. Magic can undo it.”

I would have winced. “Spells of transformation cannot be undone. The minotaur shape is not some mask that’s hiding your true form. It’s you, now. At best, another wizard could cast a second spell to give you a human shape once more, but that’s not the same as undoing the change. It’d be making a different man out of the remnants. And . . . alas, the longer you remain in this form, the more your mind changes to match it. “

Angrily, he shoved another boulder into the chasm. Bait padded over to the edge and imitated him with much smaller rocks.

“How long do I have? How long will I still . . .” He shook his head again, as if rational thought could be wrung from of his brain with sufficiently violent motion. “How long will I still think like a man?”

“It depends on a multitude of factors. The strength of your will, your emotional discipline, how close to a beast you were as a man. Recalling the memories of your former life might help, although I’m told doing so can be painful. You should be able to hold on another two or three years or so, I’d guess. But I have retired from wizardry, so this diagnosis comes without warranty.”

He considered my words while Bait dropped pebbles into the abyss.

“Long enough,” he said at last, “long enough.”

The minotaur – or Sir Peledon, or He Who Was Sir Peledon – picked up his favourite axe and left the Chasm Hall. He barred the door behind him. Kobolds had gathered in the corridors nearby. Had I the skin, I would have shivered at the sounds of axe work that echoed through the Dungeon, the suddenly silenced tapping. On and on it went, a cacophony of furious roaring and hewing.

Bait was unmoved, and occupied herself with the contents of the larder.

Later, I would learn that the minotaur slew more than three dozen kobolds, and drove the survivors back to their lair in the southern part of the Dungeon. Balor the Squinter, however, escaped the minotaur’s wrath. One good axe blow would have cleaved that sinister potato in twain, and few of the Denizens would have mourned the Squinter’s passing. But Balor took refuge in the high-ceilinged Hall of Pillars, where no axe could reach him. His eye-beams blazed, and while the pillars took the brunt of his glare, Sir Peledon was forced to retreat in the end. He came back with his hide scorched and smoking.

When he returned, he brought Clickglee and a pack of goblins with him. The goblin chieftain had to stand on tiptoe to embrace his adopted child. The others crowded around Bait, happy that she was still alive. They were even happier that she’d lived up to her name and lured so many kobolds within reach of the minotaur’s axe.

They brought her back to the safety of the Trapsmiths’ Arcade.

And me? I was left with the minotaur.

He sat down next to me at the edge of the pit, and for a long while there was a silence broken only by his heavy breathing. He picked at the burned parts of his hide, and spent some time cleaning kobold bits off his axe blade. At last, he said: “She doesn’t belong here.”

“Humans generally don’t.”

“She must be returned home.”

“So I suggested. But it’s a long way even to the nearest village.”

“I would carry her,” he said, “but they would not know who she was.”

“Is she someone, then? I suspected as much.”

“It is no concern of yours, wizard!” he snarled. I rather wished I had the pit between me and his wrath once again. Or, failing that, legs. One blow from that massive fist could smash my skull into splinters and snuff me out.

“It was a concern of Orphir’s,” I ventured.

He picked me up and held me above the pit.

“Tell me of him,” growled the minotaur, “so that I am prepared to slay him when next we meet.”

*

The cleverest thing that Orphir ever said was this: